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Mourning DovesStoriesFrom"In One Place"
Annalee is sorting through a box of seed packets. She has a swollen lip; her boyfriend punched her this morning because she had run out of bacon. She walks over to Wynn’s truck and inspects her lips in the sideview mirror. “It’s really strange to have somebody hit you,” she says. “When I was in high school, a boy hit me once and I remember thinking, If he hits me again I’m going to kill him. Then he hit me again and I didn’t do anything.”
Mourning Doves : Stories -
Mourning DovesStoriesFrom"Prisoners of Love"
Last year, when I was twelve years old, my mother married her pen pal, Bennett Jensen, who was in the Wyoming State Penitentiary for holding up a gas station. She had gotten Bennett’s name from an ad in the newspaper. He and my mother got married in the warden’s office on a Friday morning, while I was in school, and on Saturday afternoon I went with her to the prison, which was almost two hours away, in Rawlins. The three of us ate lunch in the visitors’ room. My mother had brought sandwiches wrapped in heart-shaped napkins.
Mourning Doves : Stories -
Mourning DovesStoriesFrom"Saintly Love"
Late Tuesday afternoon, Holly Parker’s son, Owen, climbed to the top of the Venus water tower. There were three people in the field below—two junior high school boys playing football, and a middle-aged woman jogging—and Owen yelled down that he was going to jump.
Mourning Doves : Stories
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Rails Under My BackA Novel
The train arrived with a smell of hot metal. Not the one she needed. Framed in the windows, the frozen-forward faces of the passengers. But they different in New York, Lucifer says. Here, the seats face forward overlooking the tracks—as if you were the conductor, you think—but there, you face the other passengers, keep yo eyes to yoself. Yes, you think, looking but not seeing, eyes turned away, curving and swerving with the tracks. The conductor shouted, STANDING PASSENGERS, PLEASE DO NOT LEAN ON THE DOORS. Cause you might fall out of the doors, like teeth spilling from a mouth. The train drew off.
Rails Under My Back : A Novel -
Rails Under My BackA Novel
Yall want this bread, yall better come get it. Damn if I’m gon chase you. The man held up two stubs of white bread. A gorilla head man with bear feet. What kind of animal? His body enveloped a leather chair in a shapeless mass of flabby flesh, a collapsed parachute. A black-tipped (rubber) brown (wood) cane slanted across his body, the curved head looping the circle of his lap. Hurry up, too. I gotta get back to the desk. The doves settled light onto the limbs of his thumbs. The man’s bowed head raised quickly, as if he’d been kicked in the chin. Yes, his eyes had caught the shadow of Hatch’s approaching shoes.
Rails Under My Back : A Novel -
Rails Under My BackA Novel
Daddy loved them dogs. Redman and Blackjack. What we ate, they ate. Never had a cold meal. Followed him everywhere, he just talkin away and they beside him, noddin they heads and waggin they tails. They be the first at the do when a guest come. Gon way from this door, Red. This caller ain’t fer you. And what you, Blackman, his shader? They could howl so, like to scare off any thang come creepin long in the night. Walk us to school, one long each side a us. And be waitin outside the schoolhouse to walk us back. And them dogs could sniff out the devil down in the deepest hell. When the huntin be good, Redman and Blackjack liked to rob the woods of all coon, possum, and rabbit.
Rails Under My Back : A Novel